Dearborn Residents Make Due Without Power

DEARBORN (WWJ) – DTE Energy crews were working into the evening to restore electricity to hundreds of customers who lost power after a fire at a substation.

About 4,000 homes and businesses lost power after a fire at a substation on Newman St. at around 10:30 a.m. Thursday. After 5 p.m. about 2,000 outages remained.

Local citizens have been making the best of it, including several ladies talking to WWJ’s Pat Sweeting at a senior citizen residence on Beech near Monroe. The group had gathered in the lobby near a fireplace which was helping to keep the area toasty warm.

In Dearborn at Michigan Ave. near Outer Drive — a police officer puts a temporary STOP sign in place to ease traffic flow during the outage. (credit: Pat Sweeting)

Nelly Wigonic was enjoy what turned into a little pre-holiday get together to which several of the ladies had brought snacks. “It’s wonderful. Everything’s fine here and it just surprised us when the electricity went off. You know how that is,” she said.

Earlier there were concerns that some residents wouldn’t be able to get downstairs is necessary but, said Wigonic, “I use a walker, but … our biggest elevator’s working so we can go up and down on one elevator.”

A generator was put into operation to keep that elevator running and another one next door.

Are you a DTE customer in the dark? Enter your address to get an estimated time when you power will be restored at this link. A power outage map is available here.